


Love is Thick (Like Blood, Like Honey)

by Green



Series: Love is Thick [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Child Abuse, Female Stiles Stilinski, Gen, Good Peter Hale, Peter is Stiles's bio dad, Peter's gonna save the day, Sheriff Stilinski is a Bad Parent, Sick Claudia Stilinski, Young Stiles, past Peter Hale/Claudia Stilinski - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 20:08:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8547403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Green/pseuds/Green
Summary: Peter finds out his best friend is sick, and she has a surprise for him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> start of a series. I don't know if the series will ever be complete, but I need to post this. thanks to ara for looking at it early on.

Peter doesn't find out right away about Claudia. That his best friend is sick. That her brain has turned against her.

 

He hasn't heard from her in ages, so he calls. Her daughter picks up the phone instead. He asks to speak to her mother and she says she's in the hospital. He asks to speak to her father, and she hums. Says he's not available. Even over the phone he can hear her anxious heart beating too-fast. She (Genim, he knows Claudia named her, but emails over the years have told him she prefers Stiles) isn't lying, though. 

 

He feels awkward asking a child, but he does anyway. "Can you tell me why your mom's in the hospital? Was she in an accident?"

 

"She has frontotemporal dementia," Stiles answers, her voice very soft and sad, but the words pronounced perfectly.

 

"...Thank you, Stiles. I'll come see her as soon as I can."

 

He only gets to visit Claudia twice before she dies.

* * *

She barely recognizes him at first when he visits for the first time. Tells him to go away and throws an alarm clock at his head. He ducks, but he's shocked. He didn't realize the effects of the illness. He read up on it, as soon as he could after hearing about her diagnosis, but reading and attempting to put those symptoms in the context of the woman he knew was impossible until now.

 

Surprising the nurses, he actually calms her down. No one has been able to do that in weeks, apparently. 

 

She looks so tired after her outburst. "Come back," she says, and despite her exhaustion, manages to grip his hand as she makes him promise. "I have to tell you."

 

"I'll be here. You have my word."

 

She looks as if there are more words on her lips as her eyelids droop, but the sedatives win the battle. He'll be back as soon as he can.

* * *

He knows there is nothing he can do. He isn't an alpha, and can't turn his friend even if it would save her life.

 

It won't, though. He consulted two different doctors in the know about the supernatural already. The Bite won't cure her, and there's no magic to do it, either. Nothing he's been able to find.

 

He stays at his sister's house while he's in town. Her children are growing up so fast. Living away from them, he's missed out on so much. He didn't think of it until he realized Stiles, his own unofficial godchild, would turn ten soon but he's never met her. He didn't know Claudia was ill until recently, and he doesn't know how much longer she has now. The nurse whispered that her prognosis wasn't good, that it was fortunate he found out before she was gone.

 

He's seen his nieces and nephew, but mostly because the family visits him in New York twice a year.

 

He has only seen Claudia once since her wedding, and that was because she visited him. Alone. Bearing photo albums, of course, but it isn't the same. Now he's spoken to her daughter once, on the phone, under terrible circumstances.

 

He wonders if he'll even be allowed to see her after…

 

He breathes through the pain at that thought. After. After Claudia.

* * *

He sees John Stilinski (who he's met once, at the wedding) in his patrol car on the other side of town than his house. So he calls Stiles to ask if she's eaten dinner yet.

 

She hasn't, but she likes burgers. And curly fries.

 

He tells her he already knew about the fries from her mother's emails over the years. 

 

"You're Peter Hale?" she asks. "Mom's best friend?"

 

"I am," he says. "Though I haven't been so great a friend lately. But one thing I can do is feed my goddaughter, so expect me soon. If that's okay… do you think your father would mind?"

 

There's a long space of quiet. Peter wonders if the call has been dropped but then Stiles says, "He won't care. Come over whenever."

 

When he gets there, as soon as she opens the door to him, before he can see her face through the to-go bags he's holding, she says, "Am I really your goddaughter?"

 

He grins and looks around the white bags at her hopeful face. The face has a chin scrape and an upturned nose like Claudia's, and her big amber eyes. "Your mother says you are, and I've never won an argument with her she cared about. Not that I would want to argue over this one."

 

She smiles in a way that makes his heart feel funny.

 

They eat burgers, curly fries, and chocolate shakes. They watch Adventure Time. And the whole time, Stiles keeps looking at him like he'll disappear if she doesn't check every other minute.

* * *

Peter didn't realize before, but John Stilinski is actually Sheriff Stilinski, now. He just won his election. Talia tells him about it, and Peter makes a sarcastic face. Funny how John has time to run a campaign and work while his wife is dying in the hospital and his daughter sits at home, anxious, grieving, and starved for attention.

* * *

He goes back to see Claudia the next day. She's lucid and he can smell the determination on her.

 

"Stiles told me you spent time with her," Claudia says.

 

"She's lovely. And she has your sarcasm, when she lets it out," Peter says.

 

"She's yours," she tells him.

 

Peter blinks. "What?"

 

"That summer. Before grad school. I… that's when it happened. I made a mistake not telling you, but I thought you had so much ahead of you, and a baby would complicate everything. And I told John I didn't know who her father was. He said he'd be her dad but…"

 

He watches in horror as she bursts into tears. Horror, shock… she isn't lying. She believes every word.

 

"I think he's hurting her. Peter, he's hurting our baby, you have to get her safe," she pleads with him, tears streaming down her face. "She gets these bruises, and she acts scared of him. She should never be afraid like that, oh god, Peter, please!"

 

He wraps his arms around her and rocks her like that time her asshole ex cheated and then acted like it didn't matter. God, it was so long ago now, over ten years. "Shh, it's okay."

 

"Promise you'll save her, Peter. She needs you. She needs her daddy."

* * *

On the way out, a nurse stops him in the hall. "She loses touch with reality. It's sad but she doesn't know what she's saying."

 

But Peter just knows Claudia was lucid. Sane. And she was telling the truth. He _knows_.

* * *

He wants to go straight to Stiles, to check her over for bruises. He remembers the scrape on her chin, fuck, he should have asked about it.

 

He wants to kill the sheriff of Beacon Fucking County.

 

But he's okay enough to think rationally. So he goes to his sister. His Alpha, in this case.

* * *

Talia tells him to watch out for Stiles, but that they can't make a move yet.

 

Talia thinks they should do things legally. Peter knows he can always make anything look like an accident.

 

But Peter also knows it'll look suspicious no matter how accidental the hypothetical "accident", if he's there waiting in the wings to take his little girl home right away.

 

_His little girl_. 

 

It took him a total of ten minutes for his heart and mind to accept his goddaughter as his daughter. His pup. His flesh, blood, bone. _His_. Pack and more. And she barely carries his scent. Not only that, but she's not safe, not with the interloper false-father, and now his wolf is growling and snarling words in his head that on any other occasion would have him questioning his sanity. 

 

Talia knows, though, and gets it. She understands what he's going through. She has her own pups, and nearly went feral when she found out about the hunter bitch who went after her son, tried to seduce him to get close to their pack. Then, it was Peter who calmed her down, got her to think rationally. She took the Argents to the Tribunal over it, instead of just tearing the woman apart without verifiable proof.

 

So now it's Peter's pup in danger, but the danger is human and they have to deal with this with human laws. Difficult, since the man is newly elected and widely respected. But everyone has secrets, and Peter already knows the man isn't worth shit smeared on the bottom of a Hale's shoes. Not if he's abusing the girl in his care. 

 

_Peter's_ girl.

 

Secrets have a way of coming out. And if the sheriff's only secret is the abuse, Peter will carefully craft more and set everything up in a way that will leave no doubt that Stiles is better off with her biological father.

 

A paternity test is the first step, Talia tells him, and Peter isn't going to go in soft. He and Talia are writing up the request for a (friendly) judge's order already, and he'll be served very soon. 

 

Peter only wishes he could do this with Claudia. He tries to visit again but she's been sedated, he's told. That's fine. He'll go see if he can catch a glimpse of his girl when she gets out of school.


End file.
